1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of data archives, and, more specifically, persistent archives of collections of data objects.
2. Related Art
The long-term storage and access of digital information is a major challenge. The rapid change of technology resulting in obsolescence of archival storage media and database management systems, coupled with the very large volumes of data (terabytes to petabytes in size) involved, appears to make the problem intractable. A concern is that, when access to data in the archive is desired at some point in the future, the technology used to create the archive may be obsolete and unavailable, and the technology existing in the future may not allow access to the data absent time-consuming conversion efforts. Another concern is that the data may not be understandable due to the passage of time and loss of context.